Definitions
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- A sibilant utterance used to attract attention and command or suggest silence.
- To incite, as a dog, by making a sibilant sound.
- [In the following passage hist is apparently the imperative of the verb, but it is peculiarly used, perhaps like whist as used also by Milton as an apparent past participle (“the winds with wonder whist”).
- n. A common dialectal form of hoist.
- n. An abbreviation of history, historical.
Wiktionary
- n. history, mainly used by schoolchildren.
- interj. A sibilant exclamation that one should be silent
GNU Webster's 1913
- interj. Hush; be silent; -- a signal for silence.
Examples
“A hissing noise was heard as if from a score of rattlesnakes, and now the cow-punchers emerged on all sides from the darkness, stepping high, with ludicrously exaggerated caution, and "hist" - ing to one another to observe the utmost prudence in approaching.”
“Wimmen's clubs is all right so long as they stick to readin 'hist'ry and discussin' tattin ', but when they flock like a lot of old hen turkeys and go to peckin' a man because he's down and can't help himself, it ain't anything but persecution -- wolves turnin 'on another one that's got his leg broke.”
The Skipper and the Skipped Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul
“But the girls had not reached the living-room door before a "hist" halted them.”
“The "hist" was repeated, and then her own name was called softly but imperatively.”
“For we had not lain half an hour, enjoying the shade, and I half asleep, when he started up with a "hist," and slipped an arrow into his bow.”
“As there was no vacant place, the slaves took hold of one of the guests, and gave him what the boys would call a "hist," right through the window, and”
“It would be a kind of hist, you know, to see my name in print, Captain Joseph Peterkin, P.M. ”
“As I did so, I heard the "hist" of another arrow passing my cheek.”
“Wa-al," said the farmer, smiling, "I d'no ez 't' hes so to speak a hist'ry, an 'yit there's allays somethin' amoosin 'to me about that platter.”
“hist" from his lips caused the speaker to moderate his tones instantly.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘hist’.
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Of Imitative Origin
Words formed in imitation of the sound of the things they signify.
bawl, biff, blizzard, blob, blooper, bob, boff, bomb, bonkers, boo, borborygmus, brouhaha and 148 more...
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Bodily
wigwag, caprae, hylozoism, abiogenesis, whorl, entropy, anima, anthropoid, avatar, symbiont, symbiote, android and 34 more...
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Linguistic Terms
Words that (mostly) only linguists know.
arpabet, protologism, diacritic, macron, macaronic, capitonym, grapheme, boustrophedon, allograph, analphabetic, idiomatic, portmanteau and 39 more...
yarb Love it Bilby. I'm gonna print off some C.J. Dennis for the kids. Jul 8, 2009
bilby
Hist! . . . . . . Hark!
The night is very dark,
And we've to go a mile or so
Across the Possum Park.
Step . . . . . . light,
Keeping to the right;
If we delay, and lose our way,
We'll be out half the night.
The clouds are low and gloomy. Oh!
It's just begun to mist!
We haven't any overcoats
And - Hist! . . . . . . Hist!
- CJ Dennis, 'Hist'. Jul 8, 2009